Protecting Sensitive Financial Data with SecureDoc™

Having identified laptop theft as a possible risk factor during its regular audit and penetration test Money Partners Holdings Ltd, one of the UK’s fastest growing lenders in the thriving specialist mortgage market, began looking for the best and most cost-effective method of eliminating the threat of data theft due to a lost or stolen laptop.

“We have a small team so we were looking for a solution which was easy to manage and allowed us to resolve issues remotely,” explained Simon Painter, Senior IT Analyst, Money Partners Holding Ltd. “We also wanted something which required minimal user training.”

SecureDoc’s pre-boot design made it impossible for unauthorized users to bypass the encryption and also had the distinct advantage of making the entire encryption process completely transparent to the user – which meant Money Partners would not have to worry about encryption-related training or help desk calls. After successful testing proved that SecureDoc met all of Money Partners’ laptop security requirements, Allpoint teamed with WinMagic to deploy the software on all laptops.

The installation and integration could not have gone more smoothly, and Money Partners has been extremely impressed by how easy it has been to manage the new encryption solution.

Five Minutes for User Training

“The install process was pretty quick and we felt that we got the setup that was right for our users and our security policies,” says Painter. “We allow about five minutes for user training, of which four minutes is us repeatedly telling the users not to forget their password, and have been impressed at how little SecureDoc has impacted on the workload of our support desk – in fact, there hasn’t been a single complaint from users or IT staff.”

But, just as important as Money Partners’ laptop security needs, SecureDoc had to be simple to manage. “Our main priority after the security and availability of our systems is the manageability,” commented Painter. “SecureDoc couldn’t be easier to administer. We have a relatively low turnover of laptops but we do have a couple of pool laptops which are constantly reassigned to new users – and SecureDoc’s software allows us to reassign these almost ‘on the fly’.”

SecureDoc has succeeded in meeting all Money Partners’ data security requirements by making it easy to secure all laptops.

“Allpoint and WinMagic made it simple to integrate full-disk encryption with existing systems without causing additional headaches for administrators or users,” noted Painter. “We currently only use it on laptops, but plan to expand its use to include terminals on client sites,” Painter continued. “Allpoint is also assisting in testing and rolling out the software on Vista.”

An Immediate ROI

In fact, SecureDoc has not only met Money Partners’ security, manageability, and ease-of-use requirements, but has also provided an excellent return on investment.

“We have had a laptop loss since deploying the software so in that respect it has already paid for itself by ensuring the data could not be accessed,” concluded Painter. “There have been a number of highprofile data losses recently and we have no intention of joining those companies,” Painter continued. “SecureDoc protects us from a scenario which we cannot mitigate in any other way, and provides Money Partners with absolute confidence that its laptop data is completely secure.”